Iran and the West

All at sea over Iran

The meaning of Iran's latest muscle-flexing in the Persian Gulf

IN BRITAIN, which says its servicemen were grabbed while going about their lawful business, there has been much harrumphing about the humiliation of a once great power. But, in truth, the decline of British sea power is a very old story. What is new in Iran's seizure a fortnight ago of 15 British sailors and marines is the message it sends about a new balance of power in the Middle East—and, connected to this, about the decline, or at least the perceived decline, of American global power.

Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has decided to cut the affair short, let the captives go and declare victory. But its original motives in this affair are hard to divine. It may have been a mistake, a deliberate provocation or an attempt to counter the pressure Iran feels from United Nations sanctions. Whatever the motive, one lesson is plain: Iran is hard to intimidate (see article). Tweaking Britain is, admittedly, a safer bet than kidnapping Americans. Nonetheless, British forces operate inside Iraq and its waters in triple trust: as best friends of the United States, as supporters of Iraq's elected government and under a mandate from the United Nations. Iran's willingness to defy not only Britain but also the superpower, the government in Baghdad and the Security Council reflects its conviction that it is the coming power in the Middle East.

And so it may be. Having been hemmed in by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Iran has gaily watched George Bush remove both enemies in quick succession. Iran knows that its Shia co-religionists in Baghdad care more about good relations with Iran than with Britain, whose small force in southern Iraq is anyway on its way home. As for defying the United Nations, the Security Council has ordered the Iranians twice recently to stop enriching uranium. Despite the imposition of sanctions, the centrifuges spin on.

As Iran's standing rises, America's falls. No other country has America's power to smash an enemy, and none is close to acquiring it. But victories in Afghanistan and Iraq have not enabled the superpower to impose peace, let alone a Pax Americana, either in Iraq or the wider Middle East. America has not frightened Syria away from its alliance with Iran. Mr Bush has not achieved his stated aims of advancing the cause of Arab democracy or bringing peace to Palestine. Indeed, Israel itself disappointed America and boosted Iran by failing in last summer's war to demolish Hizbullah, Iran's Lebanese confederate.

A sure sign of changing times is the behaviour of Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Arabs have a long history of paying allies to ward off their Persian neighbour. Until the 1960s Britain was their protector; in the 1980s it was Saddam. After his invasion of Kuwait in 1990 the Saudis enlisted America to push him out.

And yet even the Saudis now question the wisdom of relying on the superpower. It is not only that America is unpopular on the Arab street. Its dependability as an ally is in question as American voters turn against foreign adventures and the Democrats challenge the White House's control of foreign policy (Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, this week defied Mr Bush by meeting Syria's President Bashar Assad in Damascus). In Palestine and Lebanon, the Saudis have embarked on some freelance peacemaking of their own while distancing themselves from America. Opening the Arab League summit last week, King Abdullah astonished friends in Washington by calling America's presence in Iraq “an illegitimate foreign occupation”.

Four years after the invasion, the Iraq debacle continues to bedevil American diplomacy everywhere. It is one reason for the resistance in parts of Europe to America's plans for missile defence. It also explains the tepid support Britain received when it asked the Security Council to “deplore” the detention of its sailors and had to make do with “grave concern” instead. The council's other permanent members—Russia, France and China—still resent America and Britain for ignoring their wishes in 2003, and are not desperate to help the Anglo-Saxons out of their trouble now. Though the Security Council has imposed sanctions on Iran for its nuclear defiance, Russia and China have limited their scope. And though nobody would welcome an Iranian atomic bomb, not all countries agree that Iran's nuclear programme is the clear and present danger the Americans say it is. Didn't they say just that about Iraq?

And what to do about it

If the world is in two minds about Iran, so is America itself. That a militant, oil-rich Muslim theocracy of 70m people, with a Holocaust-denying president who yearns for Israel's disappearance and calls America and Britain the greater and lesser Satans, poses some sort of problem is not in dispute. Opinion divides on what to do about it.

One school says that since Iran will inevitably become a dominant regional power, an America bogged down in Iraq should seek an accommodation with it, just as Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger reached out to China to cover America's retreat from Vietnam. The other cautions that an American overture would be read as weakness. Underlying this debate is genuine puzzlement about Iran's factional politics and true intentions. Is this a regime of realists that would be willing to forgo the bomb and moderate its stance on Palestine in return for American recognition of its legitimacy and regional importance? Or is anti-Westernism inscribed indelibly in its revolutionary DNA? The saga of the British sailors offers few clues, save that at least one of Iran's powerful factions is unafraid of defying the West. But even here, Iranian bombast and bad behaviour have been combined with a shrewd calculation of the point at which it is in danger of alienating world opinion.

Now that the British are being released, America should indeed be wary of actions that make its own posture in the region look even weaker than it is. It need not act the supplicant. With the rest of the world, it should continue to insist that Iran must stop enriching uranium. But why not explore the possibility of a bargain, provided Iran can prove its claim that it does not seek nuclear weapons and signs on for compromise in Palestine? That would not just test Iran's intentions. It might even help to swing the argument in Tehran the right way.